The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) July 28, 2020 Matthew Owen 8 citations
Mental causation is central to integrated information theory (IIT), which holds that consciousness exists because it is causally efficacious. This article surveys three problems for mental causation—the lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem—and assesses their threat to IIT under different metaphysical commitments. Three versions of IIT are distinguished: reductive, non-reductive, and non-physicalist. The lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening to all versions. Reductive and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining the causal closure principle. Non-physicalist IIT denies that principle but faces the pairing problem, for which a response is briefly outlined. The survey aims to clarify which commitments lead to which problems.